Edward

Chapter Three

Washington DC, 2018

We return home after dinner at Waterstone Grill. This was our place. Before before Maddy and her place, Peanut Butter and Ellies. Sometimes —before I became pregnant— mom would watch Maddy as she did this night but once I became pregnant you and I went out by ourselves, less and less. It was a hard pregnancy. Did you believe we were losing the momentum of our love affair? I traced it over and over these last three months: the trajectory from the Paris flea market where you proposed to me to your affair with Leora Hall...and to now. So much has happened in that limbo of your love affair with that ugly woman.

We enter the foyer, the entry way lit up and a cut crystal vase of wild flowers from the garden sitting on the hewn oak hall table. Mom's doing. It was pretty, the lavender and daisies, a couple of black eyed susans. She liked that—mom. Her taste was more Martha Stewart country. She didn't understand our industrial / European antique aesthetic. I didn't understand her shabby chic, white washed cabinets and shaker furniture. Maddy loved her sectional couch, it made for a "better Wild things boat."

Oh Please don't go. I love you so.

Mom brightened when we entered the kitchen. She was leaning against the kitchen counter, glass of red wine in her hand.

"There you are!" She said. She was only looking at me. "How was it?"
"Maddy asleep?" You ask, you move to the cabinet and retrieve a glass of wine.

"Oh am I in your way?" Finally she acknowledges you but without a smile and with fleeting eye contact.

"No Joyce. You're fine."
Joyce. Mom notices it. I notice it.

"She's asleep." Mom said. "I spilled some wine on your island here." The kitchen island and the deep indented butcher block. I look down at the Burgundy blight. The psychotic shadow: blood, then now she's ruined my antique. My God damned $8,000 butcher bloc I am protective of our antiques. My instinct is anger. It was so expensive. Then I admonished my own snobbery. But the red stain, somehow.

"Did you leave it for a while mom?"

"What do you mean?"

"It's stained. You must have let it sit there."

'It does't matter Annie. What difference does it make? We'll sand it a little or bleach it."

"You're rich—What do you know?!" I snapped at you.

A silence falls. It endures and the sound of the refrigerator rises. The three of us wait. The stress starts the engine in my mind. I'm going blank. My mind still moves in and out with the wind but I don't' reveal it.

I think you and mom started talking again. Instinctive small talk. I don't know. I was lost for a moment. I was losing it.

My mind travels back before the children. Dissociation. Dr. Antol gives it a name and it irks me, Edward. Does reminiscing have to have a pathological label? Can't I calm my self with happy times we shared? "But for how long," the glum psychiatrist inquires. She writes something down—this irks me too. How long do these episodes last, Annie?" Episodes. Everything is clinical after you've been psychotic, after you've tried to kill yourself. Still I leave in my mind. I leave you and mom there to navigate the tension.

You and I are moving the island. Don't you remember? The furniture movers gave up on us. Wanted to take it back and have the antique dealer disassemble it.

"Don't be silly," you'd said to them. You took out two fifty dollar bills. One for each. "no. no. Don't be silly." Everything you said back then stirred a giggle inside of me. That was ours. You have to admit that, don't you? That humor. That silliness.